The Obama administration officially released its budget for fiscal year 2013 yesterday. As much as I like writing about policy, I frankly lack any desire to write about the substance of this budget proposal. The simple fact is that the President’s budget is basically a long, vaguely political document that is effectively meaningless. After a [...]

The Obama administration’s new budget for fiscal year 2013 (begins October 2012) is apparently going to be so bad they have decided to start warning some liberals ahead of time. From The Hill: Top White House officials are warning liberal and labor leaders to brace themselves for President Obama’s budget proposal. [...] “A senior White [...]

When deciding how to move forward with our roughly $100 billion a year war in Afghanistan, President Obama apparently didn’t even take into consideration the issue of cost at least according to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
Apparently the position of our government that when it comes to saving the lives of regular Americans it will only be done if it can done on a tight budget but when it comes to killing foreign people cost is no obj

Americans oppose any cuts to the country’s largest social safety net programs in order to reduce the federal deficit according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll (PDF). Two-thirds of Americans want no reductions in Social Security, 59 percent want no cuts to Medicare, and 53 percent want no reductions in Medicaid spending. On the [...]

When basically the entire House Republican caucus voted for Paul Ryan’s budget, which includes a “plan” to destroy the very popular Medicare program and replace it with insufficient private vouchers, I couldn’t tell if they made such a terrible political move because they were so trapped in their own ideological bubble that they actually thought [...]

This quote from Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell about why Democrats and Republicans should seek a “grand bargain” is one of the most honest and revealing statements about the problem with our political system. Via David Weigel: This was the year after the bipartisan agreement between Reagan and O’Neill raised the retirement age for [...]

Social Security currently is projected to be able to pay full benefits until around 2039, at which point current projections say it will start only paying seniors around 80 percent of what they should be getting. One would think having a program projected to be on a solid footing for the next 30 years would [...]

When you give in to hostage-taking, you set a pattern that just encourages people to take more hostages, and ask for bigger ransoms every time. This is exactly what is happening thanks to President Obama previously declaring that he must give in to Republican hostage taking tactics. From the Hill: House Republicans are considering a [...]

With Washington now terrifyingly obsessed with immediate austerity, despite the UK being a perfect example of how misguided such a move is right now, it is important for millions to realize that our economy is in no way back to stable. Two recent stories are great reminders that while the economy probably seems fine for [...]

I’m truly amazed that President Obama is willing to make a show of pretending to care about the issue of deficit reduction while literally, at the same time, increasing spending on a war kinetic military action with no clear end in sight in a country that even his Defense Secretary admits isn’t a vital interest [...]